Talk:Marvel Time
Thank you --User:Squirrelloid for what you have written below. It was I who set up the marvel time page and its great that people are contributing it and discussing this subject. It was also I who came up with the x-men reading order and I used x-men as my corpus for marvel time. I have now read the updated marvel time page an interesting reading other peoples theories and ideas. I especially liked the spider-man corpus. Let me make it clear that there is no official set rules for marvel time. I never claimed that my ideas were official. Its a bit like trying show the globe, as 3D object, as a 2D map. It doesnt matter whic way you go about it you will always have distortion and therefore controversy. There is no correct way but the equal area method works best. Likewise I can show you that the method I came up with for marvel time also works best. The simple solution for the superheroes to age at a suitably correct rate is that events in the 20th century Marvel Universe do not happen at the same time they do in the real universe. Its best to fix the sliding time scale millenium at the real millenium. This way events of the 20th century still happen in the 20th century and events in the 21st century still happen this century. Now different writers have used different time scale ratios for the 'modern era' i.e. Fantastic Four Vol 1 issue 1. over the years some writes have used 1:1, 2:1, 4:1, 5:1 I found that an average of 4:1 for the modern era works best. If this can be improved thats great. Likewise events in the rest of the 20th century have to be stretched to compensate by on average 7:10. So this is why I ended up with this Marvel time 1900s is historically equivalent to 1900-1905 ''Marvel time 1910s is historically equivalent to 1906-1911 ''Marvel time 1920s is historically equivalent to 1912-1919 ''Marvel time 1930s is historically equivalent to 1920-1925 ''Marvel time 1940s is historically equivalent to 1926-1931 ''Marvel time 1950s is historically equivalent to 1932-1939 ''Marvel time 1960s is historically equivalent to 1940-1947 ''Marvel time 1970s is historically equivalent to 1948-1955 ''Marvel time 1980s is historically equivalent to 1956-1963 ''Marvel time 1990s is historically equivalent to 1964-1999 ''Marvel time 2000s is historically equivalent to 2000-2039 Note: beginnings and end of years are approximate not absolute. This solves the problem for characters like Professor X, Magneto, Mr Fantastic etc . So you can see that that World war 2 took place in the 1960s. The Korean war took place in the 1970s. The X-Men, Fantastic Four etc are formed in the early 1990s. The comics coming out now take place in the early 2000s. You can take what the writers say so seriously as they are always contradicting each other eg retconning. This includes offical statements. Peoples ages So I agree with you on all statements but i am not wrong because there is no official absolute correct solution to contradict. What do you think now? --Ryangut 11:28, May 25, 2010 (UTC) :I think you still have the insurmountable problem that Marvel does have a few consistent ways in which Marvel Time is implemented, and they contradict your scheme. #That origins get retold with different details to modernize them is a fact of Marvel's publication history. Marvel has repeatedly and blatantly retconned character histories to keep the character age near stable while assuming comics published today happen today. Hence Xavier's origin has changed not only which war he fought in, but retconned the fact that he was drafted. Digging up character origins that have been modernized isn't even hard - what's hard is finding characters whose origins haven't needed to be updated despite referencing real world events. And all of those characters either don't age, age slowly, or otherwise have avoided aging. Regardless, the need to retell and modernize stories implies real world events do not move with Marvel Time. #Classic X-Men reprinting the original Claremont X-Men run, but altering text to strip explicit references to years and update Carter-era references to Reagan era references proves that the Marvel editors believe that real world events aren't moving forward with Marvel Time. The early part of Claremonts original run, when published, happened during the Carter presidency. Because Marvel Time had moved those events into the future, they 'now' (when Classic X-Men was published) happened during the Reagan presidency, and so the comics where changed to match on reprint. #Marvel stopped referencing real world dates for things that happened in the Marvel Universe in the early-mid 80s. Despite this, WW2 era scenes persisted in referencing years and even exact dates. This proves that WW2 is fixed at the historical time. I haven't read them, but my guess is that Wolverine: Origins gives historically accurate dates for the world wars. :Basically, the one truism about Marvel Time is that it slides relative to real world events. Any theory which doesn't assume that is necessarily wrong, because it disagrees with all of the evidence available. :--Squirrelloid 12:18, May 25, 2010 (UTC) :P.S. You also introduce a new problem. If Marvel 1990s are supposed to be 1960s-1990s historically, that means Vietnam happened during most of marvel's publication history. Where does Xavier have time to serve in Vietnam if he's already established the X-Men before it really starts? Ie, your timeline fails to explain UXM #389, which afaik is the most recent telling of that part of Xavier's origin, and therefore assumed to be correct. I imagine this also creates problems for characters like, eg, the Punisher, who also have Vietnam-related backgrounds. Thank you --User:Squirrelloid for your quick reply. I think it would be fair to say that the marvel time method I came up with below works best for the older stories and the retconning of past events you mentioned works best for the more recent stories. They're both right and both wrong due to delibarate contradictions of the the writers. Sure I agree with you about the sliding timescale especially on the classic x-men back up stories. I don't think you totally understand what I mean about the 1990s being historically equivalent to 1960 - 1999 on my proposed method. This means that the Vietnam war happened about 1991-1993. As for Professor X he: was 10 years old at the end of WW2 in the 1960s. fought in the Korean War in the 1970s. helped a young Jean Grey in the 1980s. Formed the X-Men in the early 1990s. This method allows WW2 to be relatively close in the present. i.e. circa the millineum. This seems to work fine when reading the older stories. When reading the newer stories than we now go with what the writers have retconned. So now we go with Professor X having fought in Vietnam many years ago instead of the Korean war. The important thing is that he fought in a war in Asia. When I read the classic x-men back up strips references to the reagan era I just ignore them. Likewise jean grey's tombstone says 1980 in Uncanny X-Men 138 but in future stories the date on the tombstone is blurred/obscured. so things like that are to be ignored/seen as a mistake. I have not read any recent issues like X-Men 389 but i was aware of the retconning problems thanks to this website. I hope I am making more sense now. --Ryangut 14:41, May 25, 2010 (UTC) :I've put you sequentially so this discussion can continue to make sense. :Ultimately, I think what it comes down to is you don't need Marvel Time when reading the older stories. Admittedly, X-Men is a bit of a special case, but its quite easy to just assume that the original silver-age run happens in near real time (it's pretty close actually, and other Marvel Comics at the time were deliberately happening in real time through 1967, so...), for example. If we totally ignore Byrne's 'first class' (and I know I do), figure Krakatoa happens like a year after X-Men Vol 1 66, then resume near real time on Claremont's run. Ultimately, the thing which breaks Claremont's run as real time is Kitty Pryde's aging, but you can mostly fudge it until she leaves the book. Of course, by the time he was forced to remove real world dating from the book it becomes obvious that he's instead shifted to his own internal metric of time passing. :Similarly, the FF stories that matter (The Lee/Kirby run) can be read as happening in real time because most of them *did*! :Basically, when reading older books, trust the story. When the writer changes, recompartmentalize and trust what the new writer's time cues tell you. There's no need to invoke Marvel Time at all. The important thing about Jean's headstone in UXM138 is not that it says 1956-1980, but it tells you she was 24 when she died - which agrees well with how Claremont was writing the character. (Well, the fact that it was 1980 is also important, those Claremont stories really do belong to the 70s and 80s, and reading them like they're happening closer to today robs them of some of their power. But its far more important to follow the internal consistency then try to rigidly match it to real world years). :When you let stories dictate their own timing, then, e.g., the Korean War happens when it needs to have happened for a given story. And so on. If some writer comes along and references that story years later, trust his retelling of the details for the purposes of the new writer's story. :The purpose and need for Marvel Time is explaining why these characters are still young after 40+ years of publication history. Thus it only makes sense from a 'looking back' perspective. At that point, a scheme like yours fails to satisfy both the publication record on Marvel Time and the reason for Marvel Time existing. :Basically, I consider exercises in establishing a chronology to be hypothesis testing. They need to be based on explicit data in marvel comics to have any meaning or relevance. We can test a chronology against available data to see how good it is. And I really can't find any data to support your particular scheme. :--Squirrelloid 20:03, May 25, 2010 (UTC) I do think the most important thing about a marvel time scheme is as you said ''The purpose and need for Marvel Time is explaining why these characters are still young after 40+ years of publication history Any method that does this is acceptable. As for the retcons you could presume that after the Amalgam universe split back in to the marvel and DC universes the Marvel universe was slightly altered and thats why some characters like Prof X have different origins. jean grey being 24 when she died is not important. what matters is that she was in her early 20s. Beasts birthday in X-Men the hidden years 22 is important. X-Men were the strangest teens of all and now Beast is 20. He is the oldest of the original members. You can't take birthdays, christmases, graduations etc too seriously. When characters refer to a month passing only a week has passed due to the compressed time issue. so christmas comes round multiple times a year whenever the writer feel like it. Also it is best if the sliding timescale comes to rest at the milleminum because some characters like Magneto just wouldnt work. His whole character is based on his experiences of WW2. As some one else pointed out, his character would be ruined if the sliding time scale kept sliding forward. the modern marvel age needs to be relatively close to WW2. the reason why the early modern age was written in real time is because stan lee etc never thought this super hero revival would last much longer than a few years. The industry was used to fads. if he had known all this would still be going 45 years later he would not have written it in real time. I think joe quesada did mention once that the modern era takes place over about 13 year period which fits well with my method. it is no problem that Chris claremont refers to 80s in his x-men stories as in my method the 1990s is historically equivalent to the 1960s to 1990s. So the 80s would happen about 1995-1997. You say that Chris claremont used real time for his stories but in 1982 it says Colossus is 18 years old. If it was real time colossus would only be 11 when he joined which is impossible. Using the (approximate)4:1 ratio method he is about 16 when he joins. At this rate Franklin Richards is about 10 now in print/2002 real time. Kitty pryde would be 20 likewise. I think the Spider-man/Fantastic Four corpus works very well and i am thinking about changing the beginning/end of years for the modern era accordingly. I need to give it some thought. --Ryangut 14:32, May 27, 2010 (UTC) I have taken the comments about the marvel time compression rates on board. I have now changed the year endings for my method so that it is more like the Spider-man/Fantastic Four corpus which works really well. So now instead of a flat compression rate of 4:1 for the modern era, I have now changed it to varying rates of 2:1, 3:1, 4:1 5:1. This now reflects more the writers view of marvel time over the years as had been pointed ou in these discussions. --Ryangut 13:21, June 2, 2010 (UTC) Old Page So, I'm trying to rework this page to accurately describe Marvel Time as it actually is used in the comics. The problem being, so much of the original text is, frankly, wrong. I'm pasting vast swaths of the original text here with commentary so it still exists somewhere, since this has been tied to someone's X-Men Reading Order (also problematic for various reasons that this page is not the place to get into). But the Marvel Time article deserves to exist as a separate article from that project, because its an important concept that needs to be conveyed. --Squirrelloid 16:56, May 22, 2010 (UTC) Commentary Original text is in italics, comments are in plain type and indented. The main problem is that events in characters lives are tied in to real historical events. So this floating timeline must be fixed at some point. :False conclusion stemming from a false premise. Marvel has repeatedly retold origins, decoupling the origin from whatever real world ties it originally had, and often establishing new ones. :Example: Professor X originally served in Korea (XM v1 #12-13), but later that was amended to Vietnam (UXM #389's depictions require it to be Vietnam based on jungle locations and depicted US military hardware, even if not named). He was also originally drafted (see XM v1 #12-13, XM v1 #117), but UXM #389 states he enlisted. :Example: When republishing the late 70s All-New All-Different XM v1 run as Classic X-Men in the 80s, panels were changed when they referenced current events to be about Reagan era instead of Carter era politics. (I'd provide citations, but I only know second-hand since I don't own the reprints myself). :--Squirrelloid 16:56, May 22, 2010 (UTC) The solution is that historical events in the Marvel universe do not take place at same time they do in the real universe. e.g. World War 2 takes place in the 1950s-60s. The millennium still takes place at the millennium. This way characters age at the correct rate. :First, as shown by the examples above, the actual solution used is to just change the connected events to something plausibly similar. :Second, World War 2 has been repeatedly confirmed to actually occur in the 1940s. Example: UXM #268 p1: "Madripoor, in the late summer of 1941...". It even specifies the events in the modern day are 49 years later (published in 1990). The three relevant characters involved are Captain America (frozen in ice during the war, Avengers #4 keeps shifting forward, so no effect on age in modern times), Wolverine (doesn't really age), and Black Widow (slightly problematic, age in 1941 not specified, but young. Of course, she uses a variant of the super serum to retard her aging... (MCP #130)). Other examples abound, notably of Captain America materials. :Other major events in regular history also seem fixed in time. Re: Professor Xavier's backstory example above - the wars are fixed temporally, they just change the one in his backstory. :As far as comic history goes, one must assume that there is an early fixed date somewhere after which time starts distending. That early fixed date is no earlier than 1945. Fantastic Four #1 sets the latest the early fixed date could be as ~1960, because we know FF#1 moves with the sliding timescale. (Because Marvel's writers in the 1970s brought a lot of the post-WW2 stories into continuity, there are some problems with any placement of the early fixed date, mostly related to the succession of Captain Americas, but equally problematic is the appearance of WW2 heroes in 1970s Avengers comics). :Finally, there is no evidence that the Millenium is the fixed date. Barring some policy change by Marvel, the only logical assumption is that the other fixed date is the present. :--Squirrelloid 16:56, May 22, 2010 (UTC) Marvel time 1900s is historically equivalent to 1900-1905 ''Marvel time 1910s is historically equivalent to 1906-1911 ''Marvel time 1920s is historically equivalent to 1912-1919 ''Marvel time 1930s is historically equivalent to 1920-1925 ''Marvel time 1940s is historically equivalent to 1926-1931 ''Marvel time 1950s is historically equivalent to 1932-1939 ''Marvel time 1960s is historically equivalent to 1940-1947 ''Marvel time 1970s is historically equivalent to 1948-1953 ''Marvel time 1980s is historically equivalent to 1954-1959 ''Marvel time 1990s is historically equivalent to 1960-1999 ''Marvel time 2000s is historically equivalent to 2000-2039 :In addition to the problems with this scheme based on earlier comments, Marvel explicitly stated that 11 years had passed in the Marvel Universe in the early 1990s. This scheme reduces that to 10 years and adds another 6-9 years of publication history to what's supposed to have happened in that time. Clearly this is at odds with Marvel's official statement. :The truly weird part is that if you time it based on the FF, 11 years makes a lot of sense for a statement of how much time has passed as of the early 90s in the Marvel Universe. FF happens in real time from 1961-1967 (6 years). In 1967 Franklin Richards is born. In ~1993 Franklin Richards is 5 years old. (Of course, he's been 5 for ~14 publication years at that point!) Six years before Franklin + 5 birthdays for Franklin = 11 years. :--Squirrelloid 16:56, May 22, 2010 (UTC) ''As you can see, the stories printed in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s all take place in the 1990s. So events in the rest of the century have to be expanded over a longer time period to compensate. :Proveably false. Events up to ~1993 happen over 11 years, and thus can't fit in a decade. Presumably more time has passed since then, but I'm not sure how much. :--Squirrelloid 16:56, May 22, 2010 (UTC) Don't take what you read too seriously. It is Christmas when ever the writers feel like it. So time of year is best ignored. Sometimes 'Marvel time' is not always used by writers so there are contradictions. Sometimes events are referred back to in real time. Sometimes events in the past have been retconned/overwritten. Sometimes characters refer to events as a month ago when they only happened a week ago etc. :Strangely enough, the most successful periods of Marvel's history (from a #issues sold perspective) have been when real time was assumed. The first 6 years of Marvel saw growth in sales overall, and total sales have only fallen since then. Those first 6 years were of course Marvel Time = Real Time. Similarly, Chris Claremont's run on X-Men through the early mid 80s was written as if it were occurring in real time (and he probably would have continued as well, but editorial insistence on deconnecting to specific dates and real time was becoming more vehement such that Claremont had to sneak in a reference to the year as early as 1984 instead of just stating it, after which the sense of time passing in UXM becomes much less prevalent). The early part of Claremont's run of course saw massive growth in #issues sold for the X-Men title. :The take home lesson here is that you should believe the writer's version of what's happening while you're reading it. The stories are better that way, since the best stories obviously disagreed with Marvel Time as an editorial policy. :--Squirrelloid 16:56, May 22, 2010 (UTC) There was a fairly recent issue of Uncanny X-Men, where the team met Dr Takiguchi, a character from Marvel's Godzilla comics in the 1970s, and it's said that since retiring from SHIELD, he's been living on a Pacific island for decades. This completely ignores the sliding timescale approach.EJA 20:37, February 9, 2011 (UTC) :Which wouldn't be the first instance of a writer ignoring the sliding timescale. Could also be an exaggeration or a mistake on his part. :--GrnMarvl14 21:12, February 9, 2011 (UTC) Another theory Another possible solution that's just occured to me: Instead of shifting past events closer to current times, current events in Marvel could be pushed BACK in time from the present, i.e. stories published in 2010 occur on Earth-616 around 1993. That way, going back to the compressed timeline approach, characters like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men would've debuted around 1979-80. That would go some way towards helping with the ageing of Magneto, Nick Fury ,etc. Of course, references to recent historical events such as 9/11 and Gordon Brown's term as PM in Britain are still a little bit problematic. EJA 11:22, February 10, 2011 (UTC) Response to discussion Taken in account what people and have been saying and what I have learned about Marvel: the lost generation I have radically altered my views and so have made some big changes to the marvel reading order. Please see the article. --Ryangut 16:41, February 14, 2011 (UTC)